faderift | [Closed] Got A Light?

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[Closed] Got A Light?

WHO: Athessa, Leander, Colin?, Benedict??
WHAT: Walking the parapet aka trying to get that cigarette case
WHEN: the days before Satinalia
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: following this plan, loosely

Despite all the planning, plotting, scheming that's been happening, when Athessa comes across Leander on the ramparts of the Gallows, it actually is by happenstance alone and not because she was looking for him.

The unfortunate part of this is that it means she's not as prepared as she'd like to be, but maybe that's a blessing in disguise. Maybe that's the elfroot talking. If elfroot could talk, what would it say?

"See any red birds?" She asks, the game they played while traveling a while back well remembered.

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"Oh. Well. Never mind, then." She knows he knows, and the look on her face is clear enough that he should know that she knows he knows, but there's really very few options for bailing out of that conversational path. Don't worry, you don't would be a lie. Really? But you look identical! would obviously not be welcome...it's fraught, is what it is.

As they get closer to the ferry, Athessa busies her hands tying her hair back. The wind over the water is always way too eager to whip her in the face with her own curls, and she'd rather avoid that no matter how much she might deserve the punishment right now.

"D'you think the water damaged it much?"

"No." Colin gives her a smile. "You came straight to me, and we got it out of the water quickly. I think the very worst we're looking at is a refinishing, maybe a bit of sanding."

He sneaks a peek at the box as it drains into the lining of his jacket.

"But we'll take it to a woodworker and get a professional opinion. It should be ready for us to give him by Satinalia. So this has all become a very funny story about That Time We Stole a Box by Throwing It Into the Sea, except we can't tell anyone else about it."

He looks briefly disturbed.

"Are we doing the right thing?"

"Kinda late to be moralizing about it now, isn't it?" She boggles at him. Not only is he asking the wrong person about right and wrong, but he's asking now? With the other plan, the real plan, the plan that she fucked up by happenstance, there would've been room to have doubts, regrets, undo what they did, with minimal detection if at all. But this? Now?

At least one of them is likely to be reprimanded, if not tossed in a cell next to Benedict for a spell.

"Anyway, I don't think we should give it to him while he's locked up. I dunno how long it'll be, but it's safer to wait until he's out, where they can't take it from him again, don't you think?"

"Well, obviously, we'd keep it," he agrees. "But we'd tell him about it for Satinalia."

He frowns thoughtfully at her. If he gives this thing back to Leander, it will get Athessa in trouble. She might be in trouble regardless. Stirring it up, indicating they were in on it together, even if he's trying to make things right, would just make Leander more likely to complain. Best they get it to a woodworker, then hide it somewhere in Lexie's apartments, though it's not like anyone is about to raid a lady's apartments for a two-bit cigarette box. Better to be safe than sorry.

"I'm not used to stealing things I don't have to," he says with a sigh, "but Leander is a wanker, so."

"What'd he do, piss in your boots or something?" If she wore boots, she'd hate that. It's still mostly a joke, of course, just a funny way of asking why Leander has earned the title of wanker, which maybe she should've asked before she agreed to steal from him...

But it's not really stealing if you're returning someone else's appropriated property, is it?

"I get the feeling he's making fun of me somehow whenever we talk, but that's nothing new."

"Well, yes, there's that. But he didn't do anything to me." Should he talk about this? Not even for Benedict's sake, but for his own. She's the one person he knows wouldn't argue with him about this, and it's driving him ever so slightly mad, hanging onto it by himself.

He glances away. "He...pretended to be Benedict's friend, when Benedict had no one. Before he turned himself in, I mean. Was kind to him, went to bed with him, and the next morning, pinned him down and force-fed him magebane."

Some people would say he could have done worse, which Colin would agree with, but he would also argue it was still wrong.

That stops her in her tracks.

Metaphorically, anyway, as they're already on the ferry, but the reaction is the same. A spike of horror and anger, indignant fury on behalf of a man she doesn't even like all that much. He may be an absolute walnut, but nobody deserves to be taken advantage of and force-fed anything. It puts that bitter taste in the back of her throat, probably reflects clearly on her unschooled features, though she's not paying herself any heed beyond recognizing a similar breed of trauma in another.

And somehow, though she would rather agree that Leander is a wanker, that he isn't a nice person, that what he did was wrong and what she and Colin have done is nowhere near as bad, the thing she actually says is: "Why?"

It's not really a question for Colin, not one he could possibly answer. She knows too well that the only people who know the why of pain are the ones who inflict it.

Colin glances away. She might say Benedict deserved it. There's really no way of knowing.

"Because...he wanted to catch him. The magebane made it so Benedict was helpless. So Leander forced it down him and turned him over to Riftwatch."

He won't implicate Alexandrie directly. Still, it probably wouldn't be too hard to draw that conclusion.

"Or, he turned him over to someone who let him turn himself in. Which. I can't exactly judge that sort of thing without being a raging hypocrite, but there you have it. And I still can't...the methods used, the lack of care about motives or context. We're supposed to be the good guys."

"Nobody deserves to be taken advantage of like that," she says, suppressing a shudder. "Not even a...walnut like Benedict."

It's a lot. Or at least it seems like it. If Leander won Benedict's trust, why resort to something like that? Why not just convince him to turn himself in? These are the thoughts Athessa chews on, frowning at the ferry deck. Bastard.

Athessa gets it. That's a huge relief. Colin wasn't sure if he could convey it without resorting to blatant comparisons. If Leander had been only a slightly different sort of man? But he resorted to dirty tricks, even if he wasn't that sort of man.

"And it wouldn't have taken much of anything to discover Benedict isn't the sort of person to spy on the rest of us," he says. "All they had to do was talk to the people who knew him before. Why wasn't that worth it?"

She shakes her head. Why wasn't it worth that? She doesn't have the answer, and if she tried to approximate one it'd fall short. It's all just jumbled feelings and frustration, and frustration about the feelings because she can't codify them all.

"It's fucked," she says, finally, shoving her hands into her pockets and shrugging. "We need to be working together, looking out for each other, but how can we if we can't even trust our own?" That's probably what they said about Benedict, wasn't it? It's probably what that messenger from Nevarra was hoping the reaction to Laura's extradition order would be, if it weren't for Matthias and herself shouting them down. Athessa nods again, absently. "Fucked."

"Completely fucked," Colin agrees. The ferry bumps against the corner post of the dock, and he rises to climb to the planks there, steadily as he does every day. Once off the ferry, he reaches down to help up Athessa.

She doesn't notice the offer of a helping hand until she's mid-hop and it's too late. Something, some part of her brain that doesn't understand social customs, thinks the best way to cover for that awkward, unintentional snub is to try for an even awkward-er low-five.

And she doesn't deny that part of herself. She reaches over and slaps her palm against his before he can retract it, then meanders a ways down the dock.

"Hightown?"

"This way." The marketplace isn't far. Colin doesn't think they'd find anyone trustworthy in Lowtown, and repairs shouldn't be difficult.

They're able to find someone to leave the box with. There was more damage from the impact with the water than from the water itself, but replacing a hinge, gluing a crack, and a light sanding and refinishing isn't as expensive as Colin worried. It should be done by morning.

Colin looks at Athessa. "What do you want to do? We could go to my place. I could cook dinner. There's a guest bed."

"I mean, if you're offering--" She's definitely not gonna say no to free food, and judging by that pie, Colin's a good cook. Which is a new experience for her. Her own cooking, in the field, is all about necessity, and at the Gallows she never has to cook at all.

A playful grin spreads across her face. "Though I feel compelled to say that...while you're definitely cute," this is a joke, clearly. She knows he doesn't have ulterior motives here. "You're sadly not my type."

That gets a laugh. "Guest bedroom," he repeats. "But thank you for telling me I'm cute. You'll like everyone, if they haven't gone home already. The staff, I mean."

He clearly doesn't get told he's cute often enough.

"Are you saying I'll like only the staff, or that I'll like everyone, but the staff might have already gone home?"

It's very rare, at least.

"It's just me and the staff," Colin clarifies. "Obviously I wouldn't say you'll like everyone in the world."

They arrive, and he holds the door open for her. "M'lady," he says teasingly.

With someone more her type, or with Kostos (the only exception to the rule), her response to that would be: There are easier ways to get me alone, you know.

Instead, when he holds open the door she snorts--actually snorts with laughter and dips into a curtsy the way she learned at that etiquette party they all had to attend. "Oh, thank you, Ser."

Colin laughs. As she enters, he closes the door behind her.

"It's splendid to see you, Lady Moneyface. I believe the last time we saw each other was the post-Wintersend Ball Wintersend Soiree After-Party. So long ago, it's a travesty."

"Oh! My dear Hugh G. Fortune," she exclaims in a wildly fictional accent, clasping her hands together dramatically. "It has been far, far too long. I'm afraid daddy has completely taken over my schedule--" This, pronounced shed-jewel the way fancy folk do. "--with so much nonsense, and he's even taken to cancelling the lavish tea parties I keep trying to organize. It was simply too much, I had to sneak away!"

"I say, old thing!" Colin exclaims with his hand to his heart. "What an awful--a truly wret-ched thing to endure! Your tea parties have been a mainstay of Tuesday nights since the beginning of the age! Why, it's a travesty to deprive us all of them!"

As they banter, he leads her down the hallway toward the kitchen.

She hooks her arm in his as they walk and pats his hand consolingly. "Yes, it's simply dreadful to be deprived of our..." Fuck, her improv skills are failing her-- "...Darjeeling!"

Nice save. She grins, nearly breaking character but she reins it in. "What say we make up for lost time, eh? All we need is tea and sandwiches!"

"Huzzah!" Colin agrees, having no idea what Darjeeling means. "Tea and sandwiches! Except--" he breaks character "--is that an actual request for sandwiches, or am I still cooking?"

Oh good, she doesn't have to keep this up, him breaking is all the permission she needs to drop the facade and shake her head. "No, no, I mean, unless you want sandwiches, but I'm not picky."

-

After dinner, which is delicious and is only saved from having its last scraps licked off the plate by politeness' sake, Athessa tips her chair back and balances it on two legs, looking around and taking in the room. Even just the kitchen is pretty nice. There's probably a proper dining room around somewhere, but who's going to bother with the muss and fuss of a full dinner setting for only two people?

"It's really just you by yourself here?"

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